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Economy

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The Bank of England's Super Thursday is the main event next week, with a quieter week for eurozone and US data, with company results including AA, BP, Compass and GlaxoSmithKline.

While the Bank's monetary policy committee are not expected to loosen the belt on policy, it will be a Super Thursday for Mark Carney as the bank releases its quarterly inflation report and the Governor publishes his open letter explaining why consumer price inflation overshot the 2% target by more than one percentage point in November.

Furthermore, while not interest rate hike is anticipated, the MPC's minutes and the press conference afterwards will face scrutiny over the guidance for the likely path for UK interest rates this year.

"Overall we expect the Bank to remain in wait-and-see mode after its November hike and refrain from revising its communication in the absence of relevant events or data since the last inflation report," said economists at Barclays.

"Emboldened by constructive sentiment and healthy Q4 growth, it might be open to discussing an alternative tightening path. However, we would see that as an unnecessary risk and instead we retain our call for a next hike in November 2018."

Investec was in line with most in predicting a unanimous 9-0 vote to hold Bank rate steady.

"It is possible that, with the BoE on a very gradual normalisation path, a Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member or two might have judged it appropriate to raise rates at this time," said economist Victoria Clarke.

The crucial issue for this Thursday, she said, is what guidance the BoE gives on the likely path for UK interest rates going forward. "In November, the Bank appeared broadly content with the market path for interest rates outlined in that report, namely around two hikes over 2018 and 2019. One question for next week is whether the BoE wishes to signal a slightly more aggressive pace of rate rises, perhaps signalling the possibility of three rate rises over this time."

Other macro events include UK service purchasing managers' index data on Monday ahead of Chinese, eurozone and US services PMI on Tuesday, Wednesday's ECB non-monetary policy's meeting, then Thursday's RICS housing price report and Chinese and German trade data ahead of the BoE events.

The week finished with UK industrial data and Chinese CPI.

The result flow will see Electrocomponents and Randgold on Monday; BP accompanied by Babcock, Hargreaves Lansdown and Ocado on Tuesday; GSK along with Redrow, Rio Tinto, Severn Trent, SmuriftKappa and Tullow Oil on Wednesday; and AA and Compass joined by Ashmore, Bellway, Smith & Nephew, Sophos, TalkTalk, Tate & Lyle on Thursday; with Victrex on Friday.